Spiced Rum
by amor-remanet
Summary: The chronicle of Jack Sparrow's life, in five year intervals starting with five and going until Dead Man's Chest. Currently: very slight JackxOFC. Future: JackxAnamaria, JackxTia Dalma, JackxBarbossa, JackxBootstrap, and many more.
1. Aged Five: Family

**A/N: **Written for LJ's everyfiveyears challenge, for Jack Sparrow. Currently, he's a wee five-year-old boy and not yet named "Sparrow."  
**Disclaimer: **Pirates of the Caribbean and all assorted whatnots are the legal property of Disney, Elliot, and Rossio, and the mental property of Elliot, Rossio, Verbinski, and Bruckheimer. I just think they're cool and like to write about them.

The docks are always bustling, filling over with all forms of interesting sorts that come and go as they please. Everyone's there – British, black, Chinese, Indian, pirates, merchant sailors, French, law officers who can take a hint and a few shillings for their silence. Fascinating and full of life, every one of them. Not that the tavern, The Empty Wineskin, where he lives, isn't interesting, far from it, but there's just something about the sea and the crashing waves, and the sounds of bartering, and the smell of rum and spices. It's magical. Not even mama and all the pretty girls can best it. That's what Jack Smith, aged five years, going on six, and with two loose teeth to show for it, knows above all things, save maybe that his papa's the best sailor in the Seven Seas and that he mama has the fairest face.

Mama's name is really Mary, but everyone calls her mama, simply on account of her being the only one of Johnny's girls who has a son, and that "mama" is what Jack and Johnny call her. Papa calls her "Mary" or "darlin' Mary," but no one else does. She is always, always, _always_ "mama" to everyone else, and it's mostly because that's what Jack calls her. She and papa aren't married like all the other sailors and their wives, but they don't need to be. Besides, Jack heard the captain of papa's ship, _The Endeavor_, fighting with his wife once – he hasn't told anyone because he was out sneaking around when he shouldn't have been, but the captain hit her, and papa and Johnny say you're not supposed to hit a lady – and papa and mama never, ever fight. They sometimes close the door and leave Jack with Lizzie, mama's best friend of all the girls, who also closes her door sometimes, but mostly she tells him brilliant stories about pirates and adventurers and lost loves. Jack loves these stories.

Jack doesn't understand why they all close their doors. They always say it's because they want to be alone, and Johnny says the same when Jack has to sit with him, but that's just stupid. Jack doesn't have to close a door when he wants to be alone. All he has to do is go down to the docks, find the strange old man who feeds stray cats and plays the violin for sixpences, and just watch as all the ships come sailing in and the smell of rum and spices warms his little heart. The old man plays really well, Jack thinks; all his songs sound like the sea, and it's all beautiful. Everything he knows is beautiful, he thinks.

Johnny said one time that mama, papa, Lizzie, and all the other girls close the doors for something that Jack will understand when he's older and girls look prettier; Jack told him that he thinks girls are perfectly pretty right now, thanks. That was one of the times when Lizzie closed her door too, so Jack sat with Johnny and all the other girls and smiled a lot because he likes smiling. The girls like having him around because, they say, he's a handsome young man who'll grow up into a fine sailor just like papa, and they can make him watch their shiny baubles, which he doesn't mind at all; sometimes, they let him keep small things, never necklaces, but a broken bracelet or earring, or, one time, Azura let him keep a choker. Shiny things are pretty.

And Johnny likes having him around because all the drunk sailors like seeing the girls with a little boy – he says it makes them look sweeter and it reminds the sailors of their own sons, and true loves, and things of that nature, so they're more inclined to give Johnny and the girls their money, which is always good. And he likes being around them all because they're all his big, warm family. Jack has his mama, his papa, his Lizzie, his Johnny, and all the girls, and they all have their Jack. And some people, like the preacher, Johnson or whatever his name is, who comes down to The Wineskin some Sundays to call mama and Lizzie and the girls whores, and papa a pirate, and Johnny a pimp, and Jack a bastard. He says they're all going to Hell, and that they should for corrupting an innocent like Jack. He's against their family, but they don't care. They have each other, which is all that matters.

Jack stuck his tongue out at Johnson one time. It really made him angry and it was fun to watch his face turn red. Even Tom behind the bar had a laugh about that.

That night was the only time that Jack has ever seen papa get mad at Johnny. Sometimes they make fun of each other and jostle around a bit, but that was the only time, the night that Johnny gave Jack some of his rum – just a little bit, only a couple of sips. It tasted funny, and it made him cough a little… okay, a lot, but it was fun until papa got home from sea – he was two weeks early, which Johnny didn't expect. If he had, he never would've let Jack have the rum. Jack was staggering around, which was fun because the girls were laughing and kept picking him up, but papa's face got red like Johnson's and he yelled at Johnny for sharing his rum with a five-year-old boy. He said his boy was going to have a better life than this, and then Johnny said back that no amount of pirating was going to help any of them if they never saw the booty, and then papa called Johnny something Jack didn't hear because Azura covered his ears. Then mama and Lizzie took Jack upstairs and put him to bed. They left the door open. He was ill the next morning, and his head hurt, but mama and papa took care of him, and Lizzie told him some of her stories.

Sometimes, Jack thinks papa might be mad, going on about having a better life than this. Jack can't think of having a better life, unless it'd be like the pirates in Lizzie's stories, sailing around and finding treasure and meeting pretty girls.

Lizzie's pretty. Not as pretty as mama, though Jack sometimes thinks so. She has hair like sunshine, but it's stringy like a horse's mane and has waves like the sea. She has skin like the moon, except when she blushes, and then it's like roses. Her eyes are a little lighter blue than the sea, but she always wears this black stuff around them that makes her eyes look darker, just perfect images of the ocean that Jack loves. And she wears a lot of blue – Johnny says his girls have to have colors, and every time he finds a blue dress, Lizzie gets it; mama's color is a sort of silver red. Jack loves it when she wears blue. With her hair as the sun, and her skin as the moon, and the sea in her dress and in her eyes… she is everything he thinks is perfect.

But the thing he likes best of all in this world, even before the sea and the thought that, someday, not someday soon because he's still a boy and his mama and his Lizzie still need him, but that someday, he'll be out on those waters, making his living by being free from people like Johnson and the holier-than-thou officers who arrest people like his papa (papa's too sneaky for them; they can't catch him, ever). Before that thought and the sea, there are the Moments.

The docks are no busier than usual, and the folk are no more or no less interesting, but there's something else in the air with the smell of rum and spices. Mama calls it anticipation; Jack calls it the longest wait in the whole, wide world. These are the moments when, after he's been at sea for several months, papa's supposed to come back. On these days, Jack doesn't sit in the tavern with mama, Lizzie, Johnny, and the girls. Instead, he gets out and runs for the docks, even though he always winds up sitting with the old man, his cats, and his violins, watching the waves and the horizon, tugging at his sleeve and gnawing on his lower lip like the meat he eats when Johnny can get it. But no matter what, Jack always waits, loyal to the end. Even the time papa was delayed a week – every day, Jack went to sit and watch the horizon. He's waited in the rain before, and he'll wait in any weather at all. He keeps his spirits up, though. The old man tells brilliant stories too, when he isn't playing, and any sail looks like papa's sail, which always makes him grin, but always lets him down.

And then, the real one appears, _The Endeavor_ returning from another successful run, and Jack's spirits spring up like drunken dancers to their favorite song.

And then they dock and anchor, and Jack runs down to meet them. Papa's always the last one off, but Jack always has his strong, sun burnt arms to run into. They lift him up like the sight of sails lifts his spirits and papa's sea salty laugh means everything in the world is that much brighter, and then, together, they go to see mama, Lizzie, Johnny, and the girls. And, like a proper family should, they welcome papa home.


	2. Aged Ten: Desperate Times

**A/N: **Written for LJ's everyfiveyears challenge, for Jack Sparrow. Currently, he's all of ten years old, and takes the name "Sparrow" for the first time. Also included is the AWDT prompt, "If we're both drunk, it doesn't matter."  
**Disclaimer: **Pirates of the Caribbean and all assorted whatnots are the legal property of Disney, Elliot, and Rossio, and the mental property of Elliot, Rossio, Verbinski, and Bruckheimer. I just think they're cool and like to write about them.

For the first time in his memory, the docks are cold. Winter's a relative term here, it always has been – it's just the time of year when the sun doesn't shine so bright and the winds bite a little bit harder. But now, it's cold, and his very bones are icing over. Mama has her hands on his shoulders more for herself than for him. She's wearing black today (her only bit of black), Lizzie and Johnny too, and everyone around them; Johnny's wearing his only jacket that doesn't smell like The Wineskin. And, in the middle of his huge, loving family, also for the first time he can remember, Jack feels hopelessly lost. The Wineskin regulars and Tom came out too; he had to get nice clothes for this, and Lizzie said he looked so handsome.

It's hard to believe her when she has tears in her eyes, but they're to be expected, aren't they? Mama spent all night on Tuesday crying with the door shut; on Wednesday, her eyes were red and puffy, and she still ran back to her room sometimes. Even Johnny, once he'd had a few big tankards of rum, cried with the girls.

"Never a better man'n ol' Jim," he said over a rum Jack was sure he didn't need. "Never better."

Jack cleaned up all of Johnny's glasses from Their Table; seemed like everyone in town had business drinking that night, and Tom was busy, and Tom's serving girls were even more busy, and he even got his son to come and help, and everyone was overworked, it seemed. Not too different than any other night, really, save the son and the fact that no one was having a good time. Not even one grin, with missing teeth and red cheeks, from Tom to lighten the mood. As Jack took Johnny's glasses, Johnny grabbed him by the wrist. He got his whole hand around it and looked up at Jack with red, blurry eyes and whimpered like a dog with a broken leg. Jack's pretty sure that he was drunker than everyone else at The Wineskin that night, even the old sailor who'd been in there drinking since morning.

"Yeh look jes' like 'im, Jack, me boy. Jes' like 'im!"  
"Johnny…" He struggled a bit, trying to get his arm free. "Let me go… Tom needs the flagons…"  
"Was 'is bes' friend, yeh know! Bes' friend! Thick as thieves, me an' 'im!"  
"Right, but please-"  
"Never a better man! Yeh… yeh look jes' like 'im!"  
"I know, please-"  
"Jack, 'e… 'e wanted better fer yeh. Better'n all this bloody mess."

He let go after that, drank down that last glass, and Jack thought that, maybe, he could understand what papa meant when he said that, instead of questioning his sanity for saying it.

These nice clothes are uncomfortable and it'd be truer to papa if Jack would wear his shirt and breeches, and the girls would wear their filthy dresses, and Johnny would smell like piss and smoke and rum. The Jack in shirt and breeches was always what papa embraced after several months at sea. And it's more like Jack than these old things.

He could swear to God that Johnson gives him a _look_ as he walks up the docks, like they're his church, like he bloody _owns_ them; frosty confirmation sits in his cold, grey eyes that, though Jim Smith lived and died a pirate, never at a moral agreement with the sweet and fluffy Christian Lord, he'd get a "proper," Christina send-off. Nothing about this whole mess is "proper"; he wanted to go out with a party – everyone drinking to excess and enjoying life without him – not with a funeral dirge. Even during the wholly wrong sermon, that long-winded, too-little-to-say preacher man takes a minute to look over to Jack and twist those liar's lips into a smirk. He thinks he's won, but… but hasn't he, in some way, as much as Jack hates it? It's just a shadow in the back of his mind, but, perhaps, Johnson's right about something.

Looking around, he sees his world with a detailed eye too new to fully understand. Mama, always so vibrant and beautiful, has a lined face and shrunken skin, and her dress hangs too loosely, even though Lizzie tied it tight. She's old, he realizes, and when this horrible, sweltering August passes, she'll be that much older, even if her face won't show it. She's old, and, despite his efforts to the contrary, Johnny still smells like rum and smoke. And Lizzie, his Lizzie… she has a sea contained in the sea of her eyes. But it doesn't come out, not fully… just enough to smudge her kohl, and, at that, only a little.

And they would have to do this on Jack's birthday of all days. There's not even a body, which would make it easier. A bit. Jack is ten years old, and the sea – his sea, his beautiful, blue ocean – the sea has swallowed his papa, taking the rest of Jack's life and Jack with it. Not physically… he isn't surrounded by dark water crushing down and in on him and he isn't floundering to breathe, but the air is thick with salty tears, and salty grief, and sea salt from his salty ocean, and it chokes him but he still keeps breathing. Why does he keep breathing? How does it work?

The sermon ends with wooden words of sorrow for Jim Smith and painted words of grief for a pirate – a pirate and a good man. Johnson doesn't believe a word of what he says, unless other people's pain is his greatest pleasure (and it probably is, he is a clergyman after all), but he still says that Jack's pirate father went to a "good place." A better place than here on Earth, anyways. If not that good, then at least wherever it's better than this sorry, sinning port. Always a way to moralize everything, isn't there? Even when people are grieving, there has to be a moral. Jack wants to spit and curse, and yell at that filthy son of a sea rat that there could be no better life than this – society expects nothing of them, they expect nothing of society, the rum flows until dawn, and everyone's free since they've got nothing to lose – but mama's hands on his shoulders keep him in line. He only glares and gets a smirk in return.

That bastard preacher hasn't won yet. Jack'll show him someday.

…_The Endeavor_'scaptain and his wife are there, with the little boy she's mostly raised alone. He might not even be the captain's son, since she's been known to drink too much and entertain strange men, but said sorry excuse for a man keeps the boy and raises him anyway. …The boy's quite lucky, even if his father smacks his mum when he's full up on rum… after all. The captain could be dead, like Jack's papa. His only justification for being alive is that his ship did not go down.

Sparrows hop around Jack's feet once most everyone clears out. That's what Lizzie called him once, and all the other girls picked it up and latched onto it like barnacles on a ship's hull. She said it fit him, since the birds are always moving and so is he, and they're enviable for their refusal to stop their own routines. The hands on his shoulders finally leave and, when Jack turns around to look, he sees why: Johnny has his arms around mama and she has her arms up between them; her hands are on his shoulders now. And her head's in his shoulder too, and his hand's in her hair… it suddenly all makes sense.

"Mary, Mary, sssh," he whispers warmly, though his voice shakes. "No work tonight. Won't have any of it, not tonight."  
"Johnny, what'll we-"  
"We'll get piss drunk, that's what. If we're both drunk, it doesn't matter."

They have the door closed when Lizzie takes Jack and puts him to bed; it's still closed by noon the next day. Lizzie closes her door too, and the other girls, when they laugh, sound hollowed out. …They leave too, soon enough, closing their doors and telling Jack to sit with Tom until someone comes back out. Tom gives him a tiny glass of rum, since the water's rotten or something like that, and he wakes up in bed, not knowing how he got there.

It takes a week of suffocating everywhere – The Wineskin, the congested streets and empty alleys, his beloved docks – but, finally, papa's talk of a better life makes all too much sense. There's family here, and that's it. Family and an eventual death, slow and sucking pain until, at long last, your life is leeched from you. But everything is on the sea. All opportunities open and each fate laid bare and made available. Everything is possible with that cruel mistress. Jack Smith, aged ten years and one week, knows now that he must choose between everything and nothing, and he wouldn't disrespect his papa's memory with the latter.

He leaves mama a note, finally grateful that she forced him to learn to do more than just make his mark, and steals Lizzie's kohl… something to remember her by, and he hides away like early morning on a ship known as _The Wicked Wench_. They don't find him until they're well out to sea, and, at that, he's just a rangy stowaway, sleeping peacefully amongst the bottles of rum. As it turns out, he can be more than that: they are, it seems, in constant need of cabin boys. And, somehow, the sea air and giving his name to the captain as "Sparrow" make him feel freer, though it's only been a day.


End file.
